When we decided to do this livestream, we hoped it would attract some eyeballs (people love SF vs NYC content after all). Little did we know someone from Mission Local would sit in and decide to write a story about conversation.
Mission accomplished!
-Scott
Mamdani the unexpectedly YIMBY mayor [13:34]
Ryder says YIMBY and abundance circles were initially wary of Mamdani because of his socialism and support for freezing stabilized rents. But he argues that Mamdani’s housing agenda has turned out remarkably well from a YIMBY perspective.
Mamdani has embraced market-rate construction alongside subsidized housing, hired pro-housing officials, pursued permitting and environmental-review reform, and backed a goal of 500,000 new homes overall, including 200,000 affordable units.
Ryder calls this roughly a “95th percentile” outcome relative to what a Mamdani mayoralty could have looked like. His main objections are the rent freeze and uncertainty around financing the affordable-housing target.
Lurie is pro-housing, kinda [18:03]
Laura describes almost the inverse experience with Daniel Lurie. He explicitly campaigned on building housing, so YIMBYs expected substantial progress.
There have been real wins: procedural reforms, lower inclusionary requirements, and a major upzoning. But Laura’s frustration is that San Francisco repeatedly chooses minimalist implementation when it has the legal and political opportunity to be maximalist.
She points to SB 79 implementation, the Family Zoning Plan, and the controversial Safeway redevelopment. Her complaint is not that Lurie is anti-housing, but that he is genuinely moderate in a moment she sees as requiring radical action.
Asked to grade them, Ryder gives Mamdani an A−; Laura gives Lurie a B−/C+.
But is Mamdani just being graded on a curve? [23:29]
Ryder concedes that part of his enthusiasm reflects how low expectations once were for a socialist mayor on housing. But he argues that the ideological shift itself matters.
Until recently, much of New York’s left and center treated market-rate construction skeptically. Mamdani publicly saying he changed his mind about the role of market-rate housing therefore represents a genuine political break.
Laura responds with a warning from San Francisco’s experience: passing something called housing reform is not the same as producing housing. San Francisco legalized fourplexes under rules that produced essentially none and created local density-bonus programs that were barely used.
Her caution to New York is: don’t mistake the early “everyone says build more housing now” phase for victory.
California’s state government gives cities tools; New York often doesn’t [32:43]
Ryder highlights a major structural difference. California has increasingly passed statewide housing reforms that San Francisco can either embrace or resist. New York State, by contrast, has historically blocked similar reforms.
That makes Mamdani’s city-level actions more significant: New York City often has to generate its own reform rather than simply implement a state mandate.
The irony is that San Francisco arguably has stronger external tools for producing housing, while New York currently appears more politically eager to use what authority it has.
Mamdani and “demolishing” public housing [35:21]
Asked about Mamdani’s support for redevelopment of the Fulton-Elliott-Chelsea NYCHA complex, Ryder rejects the simple framing that the mayor supports demolishing public housing.
He describes the proposal as replacing deteriorated public-housing buildings with new homes for existing residents, then building additional mixed-income housing. He acknowledges that residents’ distrust of developers and redevelopment promises is legitimate.
Still, he praises Mamdani for being willing to support a politically difficult project when he thinks the actual housing outcome is better.
How San Francisco’s bureaucracy selects for politically connected developers [37:28]
Laura argues that decades of discretionary approval in San Francisco have shaped the development industry itself.
The developers who survived are disproportionately those able to navigate a highly political, unpredictable process. That means nominally progressive procedural rules can produce an anti-competitive result: only large, wealthy, politically sophisticated developers can reliably build.
She treats the Safeway redevelopment as a bellwether. If a code-compliant project can get permits despite opposition from the mayor, developers may start believing the system has genuinely become rules-based. If politics still overrides the rules, investment will remain constrained.
Member Deference in New York [43:50]
Ryder says New York’s system produces a similar problem through the City Council norm of member deference, under which members effectively defer to the councilmember representing the affected district on many council wide decisions.
Community boards and incumbent residents gain enormous influence, while the prospective residents of housing that does not yet exist have no equivalent voice.
Ryder makes an explicitly anti-monopoly YIMBY argument: complex discretionary systems protect incumbent developers as much as incumbent homeowners. Simpler, more predictable approval lowers barriers to entry.
Why do the YIMBY coalitions align differently in New York vs San Francisco? [49:03]
YIMBYs have very different bedfellows in San Francisco and New York.
Laura argues that San Francisco progressivism grew out of an unusual alliance between left politics and neighborhood/process politics. Listening, consultation, preservation, and slowing things down became political virtues.
That creates a deep contradiction today: the progressive faction contains people who want radical social change, but its institutional culture is built around procedures that make radical physical change difficult.
Meanwhile, San Francisco moderates historically combined downtown growth with relatively conservative neighborhood politics. YIMBYism destabilized that coalition too, because it demanded growth inside residential neighborhoods.
Why New York’s left could champion YIMBYism [57:23]
Ryder suggests New York’s later adoption of YIMBY politics may actually have helped.
In San Francisco, YIMBYism became associated early with the moderate camp, which caused progressives to code it as “neoliberal.” In New York, no faction initially owned pro-housing politics, leaving the issue more ideologically open.
That allowed abundance advocates to frame supply as a separate political axis rather than a midpoint on the left-right spectrum. Ryder points to coalitions that include both DSA members and Manhattan Institute fellows.
Mamdani’s importance, in this telling, is that he has actively pulled part of the organized left toward supply-side housing politics.
Why San Francisco is the way it is [1:01:52]
Laura offers a provocative hypothesis: Scott Wiener’s very early embrace of YIMBYism may have shaped San Francisco’s entire political alignment.
Because Wiener became the movement’s champion and occupied the local “moderate” lane, other moderates followed him while progressives increasingly treated YIMBYism as belonging to the opposing team.
She wonders whether New York could eventually experience the reverse: if Mamdani becomes identified with abundance, could moderates someday turn against it because it has become “his” issue?
Laura closes with another structural theory: San Francisco may be politically dysfunctional partly because the incorporated city is too small.
She floats the idea of a Bay Area megacity encompassing San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, Marin, and surrounding areas. Larger jurisdictions create more cross-cutting constituencies and make rigid two-camp politics harder to sustain.
Ryder agrees that New York’s enormous scale produces many overlapping geographic and ideological conflicts. That makes governing harder—but may also prevent the kind of calcified factional politics Laura describes in San Francisco.
